Saturday, March 27, 2010

This one is specially dedicated to all of the people who complain about these and insist that we get back to the reviews and stop wasting our time on these shitty, boring essays that nobody cares about. I wrote this one with you in mind! You, specifically. You had better like it, or else I will write more in the future. Your hate is what keeps me going. When I begin to lose interest in the blog one of you, my loyal fan-trolls, will post an insult about how I look like I need to get some sleep or something and that's when I know that I must continue. It's all I have.

Anyway! One of the common complaints we make here on XKCD Sucks is that "this joke has been done before." And one of the common criticisms is that every joke has been done before, and that therefore originality is completely meaningless!

I, too, once thought as you did.

Because it's true, in a sense. Being Completely Original is certainly not sufficient to make a good story. Writing a story which has never been done before is a pipe dream at best. At worst, it's a recipe for something really terrible, where various rules and conventions are broken just because they are rules and conventions that other people follow.

But clearly originality does matter. Surely you have complained about Hollywood's tendency to just remake old films these days--a trend of excessive unoriginality. Nobody wants to just watch something which is a rip off of something else.

There's a saying, the origin of which I have forgotten and am too lazy to Google: "Bad poets borrow. Good poets steal." If you are writing a story, and that story is just Star Wars, you're not writing something anyone wants to watch. That's just borrowing the premise--it's not really yours. Stealing implies making it your own. You can write a story which is inspired by Star Wars--rebels against an oppressive galactic empire, a hero's quest, the works--and make it your own, and tell it in a way that only you could--even if the story itself has been done--and that would be worth reading or watching or whatever.

"But Rob, you fat, objectively undesirable fuck who is incapable of writing a coherent argument and is really dumb and apparently sanctimonious despite the fact that that's not what the word means, who is also a terrible writer and has the emotional maturity of an eight year old and is incapable of thinking about anything with anything remotely resembling objectivity and bashes literally everyone he disagrees with with nothing but hateful disdain, and also has no life at all apart from hanging out on XKCD sucks and is hated by all the commenters and has no friends and never will and doesn't even know what a vagina is, much less what one looks like, and would probably love the cock if he weren't universally undesirable to men and women alike," I hear you say. "What does this have to do with XKCD?"

Basically it's this: whenever XKCD does something which has been really obviously done before, it isn't adding anything or changing anything. It doesn't add to the conversation. It doesn't improve upon or otherwise alter the original. It doesn't offer an original take. It is essentially nothing short of taking an old joke, and then telling it again. There's nothing original or interesting about it.

It's very possible to lift the story from something else and make it your own, and make it excellent. Some of my favorite stories are essentially just rethinking old myths and classic literature (eg Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), and "reinterpretations of classics" is one of my favorite genres to write. Is it Completely Original? No. Does it add to the conversation and make it worthwhile? Certainly. If it didn't, it would be worthwhile to just say "but this is just Hamlet" or whatever.

UPDATE: Right after I posted this, a video popped up in my RSS feed. It is "inspired by" Matt and Kim's Lessons Learned video, which you should watch first. Then watch this one. The timing was too perfect to pass up! Is this original or is it a rip off?

FURTHER UPDATE: I googled the quote at the prodding of one of our friendly neighborhood cuddlefish. Apparently it is by TS Eliot and it goes like this:

"One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion."

Posted by
Rob

79 comments:

"Basically it's this: whenever XKCD does something which has been really obviously done before, it isn't adding anything or changing anything. It doesn't add to the conversation. It doesn't improve upon or otherwise alter the original. It doesn't offer an original take. It is essentially nothing short of taking an old joke, and then telling it again. There's nothing original or interesting about it."

This is not true, at least some of the time. You very often bash it for being unoriginal when the joke is very often in a completely different context than normal. Particularly when the joke is sex-related, you make this complaint.

Not that I'm saying the sex-related jokes are particularly good (because they're generally awful), but this particular argument for why they're awful is generally not justified.

"This is not true, at least some of the time. You very often bash it for being unoriginal when the joke is very often in a completely different context than normal. Particularly when the joke is sex-related, you make this complaint."

are you saying that XKCD adds something to the conversation? because I've yet to see an XKCD that adds something to the conversation.

"Not that I'm saying the sex-related jokes are particularly good (because they're generally awful), but this particular argument for why they're awful is generally not justified."

again, if you're going to make a tired joke, you'd better at least make it interesting. Randy does not do this, ever.

Everyone keeps saying how they used to like xkcd, but now they hate it very much. Protip, if you always say that, it makes you less believable. It's like saying "I have all gaming consoles, but the ps3 is gay as hell and if you own it you should die"

About the links: I don't think the new one is a complete ripoff, since she tries to take it in another direction with the references to Kennedy. But I don't think it's as good because this new direction is just weird.

Trying to associate the themes of the Kennedy assassination and someone walking around stripping (and in this one it feels a lot more like actual "stripping" rather than randomly shedding clothes with childlike innocence) honestly baffles me.

I'd say the result is kind of like XKCD - rehashing something with a lot more weird awkward sex content, and less visual quality, but I'd give this artist much more credit than Randall since I'm assuming the stuff like bad focus is purposely meant to be another reference to the Kennedy video. And at least she was trying to do something new with it. Even if she wasn't, even if she was just ripping it off entirely, ripping off that public strip scene takes a lot more effort and balls than cranking out a few poorly-drawn stick figures.

Ambivalicious: the new one is definitely trying to add something or change the context, but in many ways it felt like it was just trying to reproduce the same video but adding some hamfisted cheesy dialogue to attempt to give it a message.

of course, the derivative version is going for a different feel, and it definitely has that, and it also acknowledges its inspiration. I don't think it's a complete ripoff but I don't think it succeeded at being entirely transformative, either.

but yes, one of the things about the original is that it wasn't just Stripping Naked To Be Sexy and it felt right. and it wasn't five minutes long. I can't watch someone just walking around stripping for five minutes without getting bored.

Everyone keeps saying how they used to like xkcd, but now they hate it very much. Protip, if you always say that, it makes you less believable. It's like saying "I have all gaming consoles, but the ps3 is gay as hell and if you own it you should die"

That's a really shitty analogy. We're not saying "We read all webcomics, but XKCD is gay as hell and if you like it you should die."

Closer would be "Yeah, the PS3 used to be promising, but Sony made a bunch of really shitty decisions with the system and now it's just a mess."

also good examples. R&G might not be the best one, but I wanted to emphasize the idea that not just a single gimmick is being used but essentially the whole story. for instance, The Decemberists have written a few songs which are retellings of folk tales--The Crane Wife (1-3), The Tain, possibly some others. CS Lewis wrote Till We Have Faces based on Cupid and Psyche. the stories aren't original by most stretches of the imagination, but the retellings add something to the original in the way they're told, even if the stories remain the same.

As a proud Wii owner I can say this... I only own like 8 games for it, 3 that are ports, 3 that are supposedly for the "core gamer" and 2 that are multiplatform (you know, Rock Band and Guitar Hero) but I do have a lot of virtual console games and Wii Sports.

I do not own any of those Mama games or any of those other nintendo games designed for 5 year old children or gandparents, but I'll be damned if I ever buy an X-box 360, maybe a PS3 though

But Rob, you magnificent specimen of a man, is there any way that the Erykah Badu video isn't a rip-off? It adds nothing, it just subtracts things from the original until it is reduced to a blank slate the artist scrawls whatever message he/she wants onto.

The final voiceover seems to be about persecution of one by the masses, but that doesn't make sense coupled with the new setting/theme. Only one person wanted Kennedy dead, and then everyone wanted him dead. The masses accepted Kennedy, that's why they elected him.

In short, it just seizes an idea that doesn't work when removed from it's original context, and grafts a new context, specially designed to make the artist seem deep, onto it.

I give her points for having the stones to strip down naked in public. Not really sure if I could do that. Aside from that I say her video is just pretending to be intellectual, without putting anything real into it.

The original has an indescribably good flow to it. It's quick, and that speed is part of what makes it work so well. It's also what makes the ending so jarring and abrupt. In the new one the ending is drawn out, and this dilution causes it to be weaker than the original. I'm not saying that the Matt and Kim video has a message, but whatever it does have is transmitted much more intensely.

I have no idea if any of what I just said means anything, or if it was all just overanalyzing bullshit I threw onto a page for no reason.

yes, Matt and Kim's video is a lot more effective. it does not drag on for five minutes, it seems to have a plausible narrative for why they are getting naked.

I guess the Erykah video just felt like she was trying to be the original video without really capturing its essence or creating a new one. of course, I wasn't too keen on the music for hers, either, which didn't help.

subtlety is an artist's friend. hers was about as subtle as a brick through a window.

OK, the first video did a good job of divorcing the nudity with any association with sexuality. It's partly because it was better executed, but I'll be honest, it's also because the people in the first video are not particularly attractive.

see, I think they're both reasonably attractive. the thing is they don't spend five minutes focusing on their sensual walking and they strip pretty much immediately--not like someone who's trying to tease you, but like someone who really just doesn't want to have clothes on.

as someone mentioned, Matt and Kim's has a sense of childlike wonder--and certainly a lot of young kids have a tendency to just run around naked. it feels like that.

in Erykah's video she just walks around some random city looking sultry. we get it.

What that means though - what they manage via incredible psychological gymanistics to disguise to themselves - is that the immediate and obvious consequence of not-being-original is that it must therefore be blandly derivative, uninteresting and unfunny.

So it's a bit of a Cadmean victory for the cuddlefish, if y'ask me.They're technically right but they really shouldn't want to be.

Full disclosure: I originally said 'Pyrrhic victory', but wasn't sure of my spelling. So I googled it and found out from Wikipedia that actually the phrase I wanted was 'Cadmean victory'. I did not know that phrase before so THANKS WIKIPEDIA! :D

"One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion."

Also: I think it's telling that the quote has been mangled to become a contrast between "good" and "great" instead of "bad" and "good" in the cultural eye. We live in a culture that tries to stamp out the idea that it's possible to be bad at art. So we make the contrast between the "good" and the "great" instead--everything you do is praiseworthy!

I disagree with the earlier commenter who suggested that Rosencrantz & Guildenstern was a bad example. I think it's a perfect example of what Randall could be doing. Stoppard takes an extant work of fiction and retells it in order to examine its characters and themes in a different light. This transformation could be funny, and Randall tries (and fails) to do perform the same process in comics like the Sauron one and the Die Hard one.

I think it's important to realize that xkcd's shittiness is not always a result of Randall's ideas being shitty - sometimes (though increasingly less often) it's a result of his having passable or even good ideas and fucking them up in execution. 705 is a good example - the idea had promise, but it was just awkwardly executed, whereas 703 was just a lame idea from the start. Jokes about Firefly aren't inherently bad; they become bad when the joke is, "Hey, guys! Firefly! Remember?"

I am now one of your fan-trolls, because that thing you mention as one of your favourite genres is more often than not absolute shite.

It depends on what you mean by "reinterpretation", of course. For instance, there's a touch of "Alice in Wonderland" in "Coraline", and both are very good stories on their own. Same goes for any story that steals from things that have been before; all stories do that, it's not necessarily bad.

But since all stories do that, it would be trivial and meaningless to define reinterpretation that way. Then, for a better example, you have something like "American McGee's Alice" which while not yet pants-crappingly horrible is hardly a valuable addition to the conversation now, is it?

Cynically speaking, the only two reasons why reinterpretation is so popular is because it "borrows" free bits of imagination that are now in the public domain, while pissing on the graves of dead victorians. How brave. Back in the day they'd have settled this in the morning with sword and/or pistol.

It seems that some authors have this urge to "tell the true story". You see, the original author was a lying prudish hypocritical bigoted jingoistic closet-locked tonker, so naturally what they wrote was a load of garbage and here's how it really was. So a third possible reason is, to prove how much smarter/more enlightened the author is, compared to the predecessor.

Like Alan Moore, shitting on the shoulders of giants. (And I like Alan Moore, but sometimes that LXG gets annoying).

Anyway.

I'm tempted to end off this rant with a reference to Borges. He said, and I agree, that finding new interpretations for a work of art is part of what makes that work of art alive. (Which, lest cognitive dissonance rear its ugly head, meant finding new meanings, layers etc in that work, not setting out to one-up the author(s)).

I'm sure that if I said fantasy was my favorite genre you would complain about how many fantasy writers were just writing narcissistic wish-fulfilment stories with Mary Sue characters and paper thin plots in Tolkien ripoff settings?

every genre in the world is more often than not absolute shite. this does not stop them from having something valuable to say.

I've already listed several examples of what I mean. you're free to decide using your all-encompassing wisdom that R&G et al are bad reinterpretations or retellings but really if you're going to dismiss an entire genre based on the bad stories it contains you're a fucking moron and have no place discussing literature.

As it happens, no, if you said fantasy was your favourite genre I would not have complained about the Mary Sues. If you said Hard Sci-Fi I would not have complained about the cardboard characters and the rather anal essays on technological progress. Etc.

And while anything is 90% shit, usually that is a fault of the author(s). If somebody writes a crappy detective/fantasy/**?** novel, that is on their hands, and is not a fault of the genre so to speak.

HOWEVER, I do think the very premise/structure of any genre deserves/is amenable to critique thank you very much, and I happen to believe that "reinterpretation" is a genre that is in itself shitty, with any exceptions to this being just that- exceptions.

And I may like R&GaD, but if I do (sadly haven't watched it yet) it will be because it's a damn good play in its own right, not necessarily because it is a reinterpretation of this or that other thing.

"Still, I guess one can't blame [Randall] for cribbing extensively from other sources in order to get his Frankenstein on and get that modern Prometheus lurching down the road to go throw little girls in streams. What one can do is blame him for being so fucking shit at it."

(What adjective does it make me if I quote wholesale and change the pronouns?

Really? That's the best defense you've got? That's no better than a cuddlefish really.

Hamlet is pretty well known, so you could probably draw parallels between that and R&GaD, and illustrate how these two works fit together well, how they somehow bounce ideas between each other, and how something would be lost on me if I ignore the reinterpretation aspect of R&GaD.

You enjoyed R&GaD's interplay with Hamlet, is it too much to expect that you articulate why? You're a writer, in five minutes flat you could prolly whip up something that's honest and heartfelt if not cogent and/or entertaining.

So, after you'd have done that, maybe I go to calling you names or something equally stupid, but at least you would have made a good faith attempt at persuasion, while not looking foolish yourself.

it actually works really well. when someone has a stupid opinion (like yourself), I insult them by calling them a fucking moron (like you are). then one of two things happens. either they will get all whiny that I'm being such a jerkface jerk to them and won't treat their completely moronic opinion seriously, like you have, in which case they demonstrate that they are not worth talking to and I was right to casually dismiss them--or they will ignore the insult and continue the conversation regardless, in which case I might consider actually discussing why your idea is so utterly worthless. if you can't handle someone thinking your opinion is fucking retarded on the internet, you're not worth talking to.

you act as if people are somehow entitled to my time. this is a filter that I use so I don't waste my time actually considering serious communication with people like you, and it works wonderfully. instead I just repeatedly insult you until you lose interest. everybody wins, except you, but you aren't a person.

well, no, I take that back. you win, too: you probably are feeling arch and superior right now over this really dumb person on the internet who can't even come up with a defense of one of his statements so he hides behind "ad hominem" (lol). maybe you'll even get to tell your friends about how you badly schooled some guy who writes for XKCD Sucks. you totally won the debate!!!

so I get to not talk to you and you get to feel inappropriately smug. everyone wins!

Hey, spam-bots are people too! It's not fair to put us through all these captchas and filters and all! We want to ride in front of the bus too!

But anyways, ok, noted. You do have a very good point that you can't just answer any random fuck coming to your blog with a loud mouth. You'd never get anything done.

Why not just ignore them (me) completely then, and none of this funky business? Ignoring wastes no time.

========

.... aaaand on a completely different topic, not necessarily aimed to Rob: the two videos:

Slight disagreement with Rob's analysys there. I didn't much care for either ending; Matt and Kim's video will/is influential for the sheer chutzpah it would take to pull that stunt off, not because of the childlike sense of wonder or somesuch.

But, there is something that makes Matt and Kim's video better than Erykah's: the audience.

Matt and Kim exit this van, and judging by their clothes and those of the people around, it's cold outside. So they take a few steps and everyone ignores them; then Matt casually throws off his hat.

And everyone notices. There's no naughty bits on display, all are under several layers of clothing, but everyone knows something is up, and seeing their faces throughout the video is really a bonus.

Meanwhile, in Erykah's video we have what seems a summer day, and when she throws off her jacket she's being practical not shocking. She strips to her underwear but hey, maybe there's a beach nearby so nothing's that out of the ordinary. Then something else happens.

She strips naked. And passes near this guy who apparently does not look at her. Maybe wifey hanging on his arm would disapprove if he did, but we don't know if he's getting a peek or casually looking away. We don't see the face. Except Erykah, whom the camera resolutely follows, everyone else is out of focus or out of shot, and the video is a bit poorer for it.

The trouble is that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead gets old and repetitive quickly. It has its moments of brilliance, such as the game of questions, but overall it drags and becomes repetitive and shows just how boring the absurd can get. The movie version picks up on the slack a little, and features Tim Roth, but the play is still not a good example of a decent reimagining.

@Notrob: You can argue that the play is repetitive in structure and that this weakens its quality as an entertaining work, but considering that the play is, broadly speaking, about the fact that literally *nothing* happens to characters, especially minor characters, when they are "off-stage," I think you may be missing the point. Maybe a re-reading is in order, the better to pick up on some of the nuances you seem to have missed. Hint hint: your enjoyment of the play, your sense of "entertainment," is merely a by-product of the author's actual rhetorical intentions, though if you aren't amused by it you're a cold dead fish inside.

Progressivist bias - obviously, nothing worth mentioning happened before the beginning of the modern era. That was the Dark Ages, remember? People ate mud and shit in the corner of their hovels, the big bad Church was murdering the world every few decades, and there was nothing going on in terms of art.

At least, that seems to be the assumption in a lot of intellectual circles from the 19th century forward, with the view becoming more extreme and crystallized over time.

You could just chalk it up to ignorance of the original material; lots of people these days don't even bother to read the Shakespeare, much less whatever came before.

huh. I generally don't make things "my own" when I steal them, I mean, the last time I stole a car I basically left it as is and used it in much the same way as the previous owner. Sounds more like a definition made to make the proverb (?) make more sense.

I do think it's a good sentiment though, and thanks for explaining it - I just don't think that the meaning is clear from the original phrase.

I want to thank you for this, I've been in a rut thanks to a stupid idea in my head, acquired largely but not entirely from tvtropes, that Everything Has Been Done Before, Therefore Don't Even Bother Trying. As a young, wannabe-creative person (writing, painting, movie-making, music-making, I haven't decided yet what I want to do) seeing everything on the Internet is really depressing since "What can I do that hasn't already been done 1000x before? SIMPSONS DID IT!!" Thank you for "giving me permission" to make the old new again. If only I weren't so dumb, I would have thought of it on my own. Sometimes the best ideas are from outside. Again, thank you.

1. from 'youre-just-jealous-or-how-i-learned-to':"when people are more talented than me, I like them a lot, because not only do they provide me with superb entertainment, I can also learn a lot from them."-- But not Carl - clearly - as you've pointed out, he's not more talented, and you certainly havn't learned anything from him.

2. from '...dont-you-have-anything-better-to-do.html':"The best way to improve at skills of analysis is to analyze frequently. What do we do if not analyze XKCD here?"-- I don't know, Rob... 'write' a rambling, half-witted rant??

3. from '...comics-dont-have-to-be-funny.html':"The thing is, XKCD is trying to be funny and failing."-- Methinks you have turned into what you most despise...

4. from '...but-its-all-subjective':"The reviewer's goal is to make the subjective reaction seem as logical and universal as possible--as well, of course, as to make it an entertaining or otherwise worthwhile read."-- Entertianing? Worthwhile? I begin to see why your cuddly fish may have pointed out their concerns...

5.from '...youre-just-biased':"When I write a comic post it goes like this: do a cursory read to formulate a first impression; read it again to make sure I got it; start writing, referencing the comic for an in-depth analysis."-- There was an 'in-depth analysis'. I'm going to need a bigger magnifying glass for my tired old eyes.

6. from '...but-it-doesnt-have-to-be-original':"When I begin to lose interest in the blog one of you, my loyal fan-trolls, will post an insult about how I look like I need to get some sleep or something and that's when I know that I must continue. "-- Please, continue.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.